Ted Cheskey
Senior Conservation Manager – Bird Conservation, Education & Networks

Partners In Flight (PIF), a partnership of governments, NGOs, private business and research institutions, published its 2016 Landbird Conservation Plan. As with recent releases such as the State of North American Birds, this plan sounds the alarm for urgent bird conservation efforts to save species and reverse perilous population declines. Partners in Flight distinguishes itself by its landbird focus. Landbirds are an assemblage of bird families more easily described by what they do not include than what they include, for example waterfowl, colonial  seabirds and waterbirds and shorebirds are not included as landbirds. So, the familiar groups of songbirds are included, as are game birds, birds of prey, woodpeckers and so on.

While the plan includes high level recommendations and some examples of bird conservation activities within North America’s major ecoregions, the report’s main value is its assessment and classification of species based on a range of criteria.  These include population trend, population size and threats as well as the species own biological characteristics. The result is PIF’s well-known “Watch List” that was also a feature of the State of North American Birds. The Watch List includes 3 categories of birds of high conservation concern:

• The Red Watch List species with small and vulnerable populations that require urgent action to reverse perilously declining population trends,
• The Yellow Watch List group to “prevent declines” consisting of species with vulnerable small populations that are not declining, and
• A second Yellow Watch List group that is “declining rapidly” but which is not deemed as vulnerable as the Red Listed species due to larger populations.
  

  Evening Grosbeak, a spectacular winter visitor to many Canadian bird feeders declined a staggering 92% over the last 40 years, and is expected to lose half of its current population by 2054 if recent trends continue.

A fourth group includes 24 species that do not quite qualify for the Watch Lists because they are relatively common and widespread, but are suffering persistent long-term declines of 50 to 90% of their populations.  These species are listed in a “keep common birds common” section of the Plan.

Two species with significant populations in Canada are on the Red List – Golden-winged Warbler and Bicknell’s Thrush. Both migrate to tropical America to overwinter, the Warbler to highlands in Central America and northern Andes in South America, and the Thrush to highlands in some of the largest mountainous islands of the Caribbean, most notably, Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

Many Canadian species find themselves on the yellow watch list. In the “prevent decline” group there are only three species that occur in Canada, two of which are only represented by tiny populations of a few breeding birds at any one time – Kirtland’s Warbler (known to nest on CFB Petawawa in Ontario), and Henslow’s Sparrow, which occasionally nests in southern Ontario. The other species is Nelson’s Sparrow. This bird has an unusual distribution breeding in wetlands along the coast of Gulf of St. Lawrence and maritime Canada, along the coast of James and Hudson Bay, and intermittently across the Canadian prairies from southern Manitoba to the southern Northwest Territories. Nature Canada’s James Bay expeditions to Rupert Bay and Charlton Island, in the Eeyou Marine Region and the homelands of the Cree Nation of Waskaganish, revealed high breeding densities of Nelson’s Sparrow in many locations, both on the coast and around Charlton Island, indicating that this area is of great importance for the species.

For Nature Canada, this report is one more consistent piece of evidence in support of our mission to be a voice for nature, and a strong advocate for birds.  We demonstrate our commitment to bird conservation through our work to Save Bird Lives. We are proud to have initiated our major campaign to Keep Cats Safe and Save Bird Lives to address the most significant source of human related direct mortality of wild bird populations – predation by free roaming cats and invite all Canadians to join us in our efforts to Save Bird Lives.

Twenty-eight of the 55 species listed on the Yellow “declining” Watch list are from Canada.  All the birds in this group require conservation attention, and the list is significant. Several species from Western Canada are represented, including Lewis’s Woodpecker, Rufous Hummingbird, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Cassin’s Finch, Black Swift and Spotted Owl. A number of prairie grassland birds appear including Greater Sage Grouse, Sprague’s Pipit, Chestnut-collared and McCown’s Longspur, Bobolink, and Baird’s Sparrow.   Several species with boreal distributions or arctic distributions appear on the list including Snowy Owl, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Connecticut Warbler, Canada Warbler, Cape May Warbler, and the species featured on the cover image for the report, Evening Grosbeak.  Species of the deciduous forest region in southern Canada, largely confined to Ontario and extreme south-western Quebec include Black-billed Cuckoo, Wood Thrush, Cerulean, Prairie and Prothonotary Warblers

Canada Warbler has declined by 63% over the past 40 years. Nature Canada and its partners in the Canada Warbler International Conservation Initiative are working to reverse this trend.

Of the “Keep Common Birds Common” list, 21 of the 24 species regularly breed in Canada. An alarming statistic, designed to get our attention that appears in the descriptive statistics for the species list, is the species “half-life” if current trends persist.  In other words, this is the estimated amount of time for which a species population is expected to be reduced to one half of what it is currently.  Four of the species listed (from Canada) have half-lives of less than 20 years! Northern Bobwhite’s half-life is 10 years, Blackpoll Warbler and Lark Bunting, 16 years, and Rusty Blackbird, 19 years.

The addition of this half-life calculation adds significantly to emphasize the urgent need for conservation measures for many of the species evaluated. We cannot afford to not act now!

As expected in a major continental report, the conservation measures advocated for avoid specifics – otherwise the report would be impenetrable.  Instead, they emphasize key principles, including the need for a full life-cycle approach to conservation (that considers threats on during breeding, migration and wintering cycles), and the need for collaborative approaches and partnerships that are the hallmark of the international Joint Ventures.

		Want more nature news? Subscribe to Nature Canada’s online community!			Join Now!